the multiplication of roots.”[1] “Let master d'Abacco show thee the square of the circle.”[2] Or on the occasion of a journey he entered in his diary:
“I am going to Milan to look after the affairs of my garden . . . order two pack-sacks to be made. Ask Boltraffio to show thee his turning-lathe and let him polish a stone on it.—Leave the book to master Andrea il Todesco.”[3] Or he wrote a resolution of quite different significance: “Thou must show in thy treatise that the earth is a star, like the moon or resembling it, and thus prove the nobility of our world.”[4]
In this diary, which like the diaries of other mortals often skim over the most important events of the day with only few words or ignore them altogether, one finds a few entries which on account of their peculiarity are cited
- ↑ Edm. Solmi: Leonardo da Vinci, German translation, p. 152.
- ↑ Solmi, l. c. p. 203.
- ↑ Leonardo thus behaves like one who was in the habit of making a daily confession to another person whom he now replaced by his diary. For an assumption as to who this person may have been see Merejkowski, p. 309.
- ↑ M. Herzfeld: Leonardo da Vinci, 1906, p. 141.
